On Wed, 21 Feb 2018, md@Linux.IT (Marco d'Itri) wrote:
> On Feb 21, Antonio Terceiro <terceiro@debian.org> wrote:
>
>> Maybe the proposal needs to be clarified, but my understanding was that
>> some companies are willing to fund a longer LTS for a restricted set of
>> packages and architectures¹, but that the product of that would continue
>> to be available for anyone.
> Indeed. If the scope of the project is reasonable and clearly defined
> then I would definitely be in favour of distributing the results in the
> Debian archive.
I'm in favour of making it possible for our users to build structures
that enable longer support periods if that's what they require. There
would seem to be a need for an OS that would have support measured in
decades rather than years, and we should not get in the way of Debian
being that OS.
If doing this stepping-stone to longer support allows sponsors to get
used to funding such very-long-term support, then I think we should give
it a chance to develop as part of Debian.
Once the funding dries up for Wheezy, we can always decide it didn't
really work out and not do it for future releases.
I would however suggest that it should not be part of the normal mirror
area, since:
There is going to be a step-change in the level of support, with many
more packages dropping out of support. Users should have to notice
this and update their sources.lists as they see fit.
We don't want to inflict ever increasing demands for space on the
mirror network by keeping ever older, mostly obsolete, distros around.
Especially since it might be that very few people end up using them.
I'd have thought that the sponsors should be willing to set up mirrors
for these repos. if there is a need for mirrors (since they're quite
likely to do that anyway for internal use, and so just need to provide
public access to those).
Cheers, Phil.
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